Patpong Sisters: An American Woman's View of the Bangkok Sex World

by Cleo Odzer

Overview

Cleo Odzer, a young American anthropologist, spent three years studying Bangkok’s red-light district, Patpong, an area of a few blocks teeming with bars and explicit sex shows. Patpong is now world famous for its available and extremely attractive y

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781611459838
Publisher:	Arcade
Publication date:	01/23/2012
Sold by:	SIMON & SCHUSTER
Format:	eBook
Pages:	320
File size:	3 MB

About the Author

Cleo Odzer was an adventurous American writer born in 1950 in New York. She received a PhD in anthropology from The New School for Social Research. After studying the sex culture in Bangkok, Thailand, she then traveled to Goa, India, and would later write about the hippie culture there in her second book, Goa Freaks. Odzer died in 2001 in Goa, India.

Editorial Reviews

As an anthropology graduate student, Odzer was in Thailand in 1988-90 studying its prostitution industry, centered in the Patpong district of Bangkok. Because of the culture's particularly repressive views of women's rights and female sexuality, according to the author, prostitution thrives, attracting many foreign male tourists. Studies estimate that between 15 and 30% of Thai women work in the sex industry, and Odzer's goal was to assess the impact of such a career on their lives. She discovered that, while prostitution is in many respects demeaning, its practitioners are nevertheless more ``liberated'' and more self-assertive than more traditional Thai women. The book is shorter on analysis than on narrative accounts of Odzer's interaction with various Patpong women and men, which, while lacking the academic rigor she initially promises, are engrossing. At times tales of her own romantic adventures all but subsume discussion of her research project. Illustrations. (Nov.)

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

Odzer offers a personal account of her three years in Thailand studying prostitution in a Bangkok red light district catering to foreigners. She interviews bar girls and bar boys, describes their families and lives outside of the district, and reveals her romantic involvement with a Thai pimp. She discusses AIDS and economic oppression of women in Thailand, and concludes that some of the workers are intelligent and entrepreneurial. Includes b&w photos. Lacks an index. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Booknews

Odzer went to Bangkok to study prostitution for her anthropology dissertation, but she comes across as anything but academic in this highly personal, anecdotal account of her experiences in Patpong, the city's thriving red-light district. Indeed, her findings confound expectations. The bar girls Odzer managed to befriend were adept in turning sexual transactions into affairs of the heart, making Western men feel responsible for them and, eventually, their families. Compared to the village life they left, these enterprising women were living the good life, earning much more money than they possibly could at more respectable occupations. When Odzer accompanied her friends and subjects on their visits home, they were treated like dignitaries, admired for their pretty clothes, freedom, and sophistication. Odzer even managed to win the confidence of some Western men willing to explain their infatuations with these pragmatic, even ruthless Thai women, but her own messy affair with a Thai man provided her with the most revealing insights into the conundrums of Patpong life. Candid, intrepid, and perceptive, Odzer humanizes a realm outsiders are all to quick to judge and dismiss, a realm shadowed, now, by a looming AIDS epidemic.

Donna Seaman

"Controversial . . . peopled with interesting characters." —Wall Street Journal Asia

"Controversial . . . peopled with interesting characters." —Wall Street Journal Asia

From the Publisher

Controversial . . . peopled with interesting characters.

Wall Street Journal Asia